Mobile-Mentary

Filed under Presentation, Walk/Tour, projects

Event Information

Artist: Max Schlesser
Website: http://www.mobile-mentary.co.uk

The mobile-mentary is an experiment in cinematic communication. The city film is exploring Japanese metropolitan centers through the lens of a mobile phone. (The project is presented on the streets and in a cinematic experience).

In 2000, the first camera phone was introduced in Japan. In the mobile-mentary project presentation I would like to combine a master-class with a screening and walk through the local neighborhood while viewing video clips from Japan on a mobile phone. In addition, I will introduce the project, its current research stage, and the production process of the mobile-mentary project. This neologism was created to emphasize the convergence of mobile technologies and documentary practice.
In a similar way as image recognition technologies (as existing in Japan in the public space) bridge one’s everyday life environment with the world wide web, the mobile phone has the potential to bridge the “digetic”environment of the user holding the mobile device in his hand with an arbitrary filmic location, which is presented on screen. Thus, the two distinctive spaces can merge into one experience. Within this new (mobile) media experience the non-digetic sound of the (mobile screening) environment (in New York City) will consequently merge with the visual content on screen (as filmed on location in Japan, or the sound recording from the field with the mobile device’s location environment). The mobile phone enables us to take the images from the cinematic screen back to the streets.

The city film which has been shot on a mobile phone (on the other end of the world) will be distributed in segments from the full-length film as micro-movies via Bluetooth hubs. The mobile media devices create a new experience and connect the environment (mobile screening location-New York City) with the filmic (on screen location-Japan) to a new temporal and spatial dimension.
Also, I would like to record the walk on video (using mobile phones), and the screening could become part of the film project.